Much like the United States' strategic petroleum reserve, Texas needs a strategic water reserve that will ensure our state's water security into the future. Achieving this will require a paradigm shift, which includes working with neighboring states and utilizing new technology and innovative strategies.

Our state's leadership has been slow to catch on, even as Texas' population explodes. The next election cycle promises new leadership and an opportunity for a focused, bold water agenda.

The new ideas presented by these fresh faces should include beginning an open dialogue with our neighboring states and investing in new technology to bolster our state's water supply, rather than relying on the same approaches that, so far, have failed to provide us with a water supply that future generations can rely on. In a time of record-setting drought, we need constructive and innovative approaches to governing, along with a commitment to leave the political bravado at the door.

Five-state water council

Would the Toledo Bend Reservoir, which sits on the Sabine River between Texas and Louisiana, be built in today's political environment? Most experts would answer this question with a resounding "No!"

Unfortunately, relationships between Texas and the states that border it are strained at best. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue, lawsuits are the modus operandi. Rather than asking the U.S. Supreme Court to call the shots when it comes to trading water with other states, Texas should lead by developing a five-state water council to address our water shortages and their surplus inventory in a very humble way. Our state leadership should travel with hat in hand to Oklahoma City and sit down with that state's leadership and tribal councils to negotiate a compromise that will ultimately result in a modern-day water project the size of Toledo Bend.

If developed correctly, this five-state bloc will rapidly become the leading global region in the world and the largest incubator of technology in water, energy and telecommunications. There is no question that regional economies thrive better than isolated ones.

Aquifer storage

In response to the drought of record in the 1950s, Texans got busy and built 60 percent of our state's current surface water storage. This generation of Texas leadership needs to respond similarly to our own historic drought using emerging technologies, such as desalination and aquifer storage and recovery to ultimately create our own Strategic Water Reserve.

Currently, the 2012 Texas State Water Plan includes 26 new reservoirs at a total cost of $13.2 billion. As we've witnessed evaporation of surface water plague our state over the past two years, we can be reasonably sure that if built, these reservoirs will experience more than 50 percent evaporation. Who would invest in a project that loses 50 percent of its product to a non-revenue source?

Because aquifer storage and recovery provides for the underground storage and retrieval of water without losing any to evaporation, many other states have turned to this strategy to store water for their future needs. Florida currently boasts 26 aquifer storage and recovery sites, with 15 more in the works. Las Vegas, the city that boasts the largest aquifer storage and recovery in the country, currently stores 320,000 acre-feet of water under the city's streets.

In lieu of constructing controversial reservoirs that entails flooding thousands of acres of prime land in Texas, we should explore how these states in the west and southern sectors are storing water underground. With approximately 5 billion acre-feet of underground storage capacity in the region, there is no reason to continue the strategy of building surface water reservoirs.

In an average year of rainfall, Texas loses 43 million acre-feet of runoff that ultimately flows into the Gulf of Mexico. To combat this, we should build a series of aquifer storage and recovery sites along each major river to capture this water and build our Strategic Water Reserve for the sustainability of future generations of Texans.

Aquifer storage and recovery projects can be developed cheaper and five times faster than surface water projects.

Now is the time to join with our neighbors to begin constructing the Southwestern States' Strategic Water Reserve. In November, we will ask for your support to fund our state water plan.

In return, we should use the best, most cost-effective approach to implement it. Our state's viability depends on it, and our leadership's legacy will be determined by it.